A recurring theme of President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential transition has been his frequent claims that he wants Canada to join the United States. However, the emotion is not new, nor is Trump’s cocky assurance about its popularity and ease.
Almost throughout American history, such discussions have arisen, frequently supported by the notion that Canadians were also demanding it.
Former President Thomas Jefferson told Philadelphia newspaper publisher Thomas Duanet that acquiring Canada this year, up to the area of Quebec, would just require marching. This was during the War of 1812. (Warning: It wasn’t.) In a post on the comment, the National Park Service points out that many Americans mistakenly believed that Canadians would welcome American troops.
Historian John W. Quist claims that later in the 1800s, a certain amount of pro-annexation attitude emerged inside each of the main U.S. political parties, bound together by the belief that annexation of Canada would take place amicably and be accepted by Canadians.
Trump has since posted on social media that many Canadians adore being the 51st State.
At a press conference on Tuesday, he continued the drumbeat by telling reporters that he may use economic force to purchase Canada. Trump went on to say, “That would really be something.” He said, “You take a look at what that looks like, and you get rid of that artificially drawn line.” Additionally, it would improve national security significantly.
The prime minister of Canada, Justin Trude, stated on X after Trump’s remarks: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”
Canadian public opinion surveys reveal a unique political culture that differs greatly from that of the US.
Although Trump performed better than President Joe Biden on the same metric four years earlier, particularly among younger Canadians, a September poll by the Environics Institute revealed that Canadians preferred Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by a 3-to-1 margin ahead of the 2024 election. (The poll did reveal that, unlike in 2020, a majority of Canadian Conservatives preferred him this time.)
According to Pew Research Center surveys, Canadians’ attitudes of the United States have been generally positive during the past 25 years, but they have never been worse than during Trump’s presidency. In 2020, they fell to 35% in favor of the country before rising again upon the election of President Joe Biden. Polling from the Environics Institute reveals a similar pattern.
Over the years, a few Canadian politicians and parties that support U.S. annexation have emerged, but they have swiftly vanished without garnering much more than a passing mention from the general public.
The likes of Quebec would also be a very strange fit as the 51st state, as noted by Montreal Gazette columnist Allison Haines in 2018 while writing about one of those utopian endeavors. This is because support for universal health care is deeply ingrained in Canadian political culture (although some polls have indicated growing interest in reform in Canada), and it is still a contentious issue in the United States.
It serves as a reminder of how quickly then-Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP members warned about the possible electoral repercussions of adding additional Democratic senators the last time the subject of adding new states to the U.S. was in the public eye. When converted into hypothetical votes, the Environics Institute survey would increase the number of anti-Trump voters in the nation by millions.
To put it briefly, Trump’s rhetorical aspirations of a straightforward match are far more nuanced in practice. However, the president-elect is not the first person in American history to skate by such trivialities in order to discuss manifest destiny’s new horizons.
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